RethinkDB

Scalable database for the real-time web

Description

RethinkDB was an open-source database, the first of its kind that makes use of a distributed and scalable NoSQL database. RethinkDB was built from its inception for real-time web applications. It provided solutions to make processes faster and more reliable such as using live push updates instead of the traditional and slower polling for data in queries.

Stats

Category

Software and Hardware

Country

United States

Started

In 2009

Closed

By 2016

Number of Founders

Two

Name of Founders

Michael Glukhovsky, Slava Akhmechet

Number of Employees

Between 11 And 50

Number of Funding Rounds

4

Total Funding Amount

$12.2M

Number of Investors

16

Precise Cause of Failure

Bad Market Fit

Business Outcome

Acquired

Cause of Failure

RethinkDB founder
highlighted in a postmortem some of the reasons for which he believed his
company failed to thrive despite that fact that they had a good product.

Choosing the ‘wrong market’
was mentioned as one of their major mistakes. Since the beginning they were
taken by their clients as being an open-source tool and pretty much no one
wanted to pay for it. If a substantial price barrier would have been put, users
would have probably searched for another tool in the ocean of free and open
source tools that other developers make available. Another major blunder was
that despite they focused on seemingly important metrics, these weren’t the
metrics users and clients were primarily interested in. Their ‘metrics of
goodness’ according to the startup were releasing a flawless product (and yet
their successful competitors at MongoDB became very popular even though they
had an initial buggy product), design a simple interface, and database
consistency. On the other hand, customers wanted the products to be available
as soon as possible (they had to wait almost 3 years for RethinkDB), speedy
performance, and a good and tried way to store JSON documents and create
reports.

Fortunately, enough,
RethinkDB technology won’t fall into oblivion as it has been acquired a couple
of months after its 2016 shutdown by the Linux Foundation (CNFC).

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RethinkDB was an open-source database, the first of its kind that makes use of a distributed and scalable NoSQL database. RethinkDB was built from its inception for real-time web applications. It provided solutions to make processes faster and more reliable such as using live push updates instead of the traditional and slower polling for data in queries.

Cause of Failure

RethinkDB founder
highlighted in a postmortem some of the reasons for which he believed his
company failed to thrive despite that fact that they had a good product.

Choosing the ‘wrong market’
was mentioned as one of their major mistakes. Since the beginning they were
taken by their clients as being an open-source tool and pretty much no one
wanted to pay for it. If a substantial price barrier would have been put, users
would have probably searched for another tool in the ocean of free and open
source tools that other developers make available. Another major blunder was
that despite they focused on seemingly important metrics, these weren’t the
metrics users and clients were primarily interested in. Their ‘metrics of
goodness’ according to the startup were releasing a flawless product (and yet
their successful competitors at MongoDB became very popular even though they
had an initial buggy product), design a simple interface, and database
consistency. On the other hand, customers wanted the products to be available
as soon as possible (they had to wait almost 3 years for RethinkDB), speedy
performance, and a good and tried way to store JSON documents and create
reports.

Fortunately, enough,
RethinkDB technology won’t fall into oblivion as it has been acquired a couple
of months after its 2016 shutdown by the Linux Foundation (CNFC).